This game was the real reason why I bought a CD-i. The most beautiful photorealistic animated backgrounds of nature adorn the edges of your tetris playfield monolith, while the smoothest, most weather-channel-core kind-of-vaporwave-but-not-really music plays. While the purpose of it was likely to showcase how CD media can be used to make a more "real" game compared to other variations of tetris up to this point, it also turned this game into an incredible aesthetic piece/time capsule.
As an actual tetris game, it's kinda mid at best. Only one direction to rotate the pieces, true random piece selection, no soft dropping, hard dropping relegated to a button press instead of the more logical up/down input, and no lock delay making having a low pile integral to survival. Despite all those problems, it's still Tetris. And I like Tetris. The game has a bespoke scenic background and song for each speed level, which does mean every 10 or so lines the game has to stop and load in the next level which can break the pace a bit. For once, I wish I wasn't so decent at Tetris so that I could spend more time in each level to really soak in the atmosphere.
I've heard this game be described as a proto-Tetris Effect due to its heavy aesthetic emphasis and I definitely see the similarities. Even when I made a mistake due to the myriad of minor gameplay gripes, I was never frustrated. If anything, starting over was exciting because I could vibe through the game from the beginning all over again. This game is basically the killer app of the system for me. It's a bit obscure, it's got that optimistic 90's CD-ROM energy, it's got an extremely strong aesthetic, and it's not the best in the gameplay department. Can you get any more CD-i than that?
As an actual tetris game, it's kinda mid at best. Only one direction to rotate the pieces, true random piece selection, no soft dropping, hard dropping relegated to a button press instead of the more logical up/down input, and no lock delay making having a low pile integral to survival. Despite all those problems, it's still Tetris. And I like Tetris. The game has a bespoke scenic background and song for each speed level, which does mean every 10 or so lines the game has to stop and load in the next level which can break the pace a bit. For once, I wish I wasn't so decent at Tetris so that I could spend more time in each level to really soak in the atmosphere.
I've heard this game be described as a proto-Tetris Effect due to its heavy aesthetic emphasis and I definitely see the similarities. Even when I made a mistake due to the myriad of minor gameplay gripes, I was never frustrated. If anything, starting over was exciting because I could vibe through the game from the beginning all over again. This game is basically the killer app of the system for me. It's a bit obscure, it's got that optimistic 90's CD-ROM energy, it's got an extremely strong aesthetic, and it's not the best in the gameplay department. Can you get any more CD-i than that?